|
Magazine
Building a bleak future
HARISH TYAGI
|
Brick kilns in North India thrive employing children of seasonal, migrant labourers because they are cheap and unorganised.
|
Kailash has a grim outlook on life unlike others of his age who are busy learning cycling, computers and chess.
Photo: Harish Tyagi
Lost childhood: Workers at a brick kiln.
On a hot summer day at Meerut , a group of dishevelled kids toil at a small brick-kiln unit on the city’s outskirts, their nimble hands blistered by firming scores of bricks each day. The days of childhood innocence lost and deprived of educati
on and basic living standards, the children labour amid a hazardous environment toward an uncertain future.
Eight-year-old Nafis, with a playful smile in spite of cracked hands, does not know of a life outside the kiln. The boy who moved along with his family seven months back now leads a team of children at the brick kiln. “For us, the factory is our world. We have never been to a cinema hall, though we often dream of going there to watch our heroes,” says Nafis, adding that the children put in over 10 hours of hard labour every day.
Seventy-five per cent of India’s population lives in the countryside and most migrant workers belong to rural areas with the poorest economic indicators. In their search for work that will bring them at least one square meal a day, entire families move out from the village, often leaving only the elderly behind.
Economic necessities
Most migrant labourers in India work in the unorganised sector, including salt manufacturing units, construction work, sugarcane cropping and harvesting or brick-making. Brick kilns are mostly situated in rural and semi-urban areas of States like Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan. A majority of the workers at these units are migrant labourers from the impoverished areas of western Uttar Pradesh and States of Bihar and Orissa. Nearly half of these workers in the Indian brick industry, considered the second-largest worldwide after China, are women and many of them children. They are temporary, casual workers who earn low wages and draw no social-security benefits. They have no unions and very little legislation to protect them. There is no option but to work in this industry because of lack of job avenues elsewhere.
The workers usually work for five to seven months beginning around October. Their living conditions are miserable — they live in poorly-ventilated barrack-like structures near the kilns which have no potable water or sanitation facilities.
Because the shaping of bricks from clay is mostly done by children and more importantly, since they are cheap labour, the children are in high demand in the industry. But they often suffer from malnutrition, water-borne and various skin diseases because of the occupational hazards.
Many days, Nafis and the children work for up to 12 hours unloading bricks and heavy weights which take their toll on their delicate bodies making them susceptible to various illnesses. “My hands pain and I often feel weak and listless. Most of us are down with fever at regular intervals. But we have to work hard for the survival of the family,” says nine-year-old Sanju.
Nafis’s parents are distressed but have little choice. “We know about the effects on children but there is little we can do. The government does not provide any support, we only hear of mid-day meal schemes or other schemes to make childhood secure on radio or TV,” Nafis’s mother, Jamila says. They don’t get even the average nutrition which a child needs to survive. This is because the meagre amount they earn all goes into the family’s saving for births, marriages or buying a piece of land. The migrant worker involves his whole family because production time is limited and the more bricks they make, the more money they get.
Neither is there any access to education, the parents say, hastening to add that in any case their poor economic conditions would deter them from sending the children to school. Many children work along with their parents at the kilns, while others, some as young as eight, look after infant siblings. Babies are left behind to fend for themselves. There are no playgrounds or even safe playing areas and small children can be found playing in hazard-prone areas without any adult supervision.
Nafis feels uncomfortable when asked whether he goes to school. “Earlier I used to go to madrassas but these days I have to support my family. I have no time for school and it hardly matters anyway. It’s a waste of time and money.”
Eleven-year-old Kailash, who has three sisters and two brothers who also work at the kilns, has never been to school and also migrated from western Uttar Pradesh. “If we go to school we would have to pay there and spend money and time but here we make 1,000 bricks in a day over 10 hours. I get paid about Rs.150 and can sleep in peace at night. I cannot have more expectations from life for the time being,” he says.
Kailash, who plans to go back with his parents at the end of the work season, has a grim outlook on life unlike others of his age who are busy learning cycling, computers and chess. Ankit, Rekha, Rajkumar and Sonu, all between eight and 14 years of age who have come here for work from nearby districts in western Uttar Pradesh have the same story to tell.
An advantage of working in this industry, which is also a big drawback, is that the owners often give the workers an “advance” for which they charge no interest. This can be used for weddings, buying a house or a piece of land or for emergency medical needs. The accounts are settled only after the brick-making season, which lasts for seven to eight months, is over. In short, with no written agreements to guide the transaction and in the absence of unions, the owners pay what they want, at a time when the workers are looking at four to five months of unemployment.
Unseen plight
Migrant workers remain a low priority area for State authorities and have virtually no support from civil society and local people who look on them as outsiders. Visits to the kilns would reveal that though employing children under 14 is banned under Indian law, the children are involved in nearly all the burdensome and stressful work at the factories. This is of course, denied outright by the kiln-owners who wish to garner maximum profits by employing cheapest labour.
My repeated journeys to these children’s sweatshops made me reflect on the apathy of the government towards the plight of the young migrant workers who undergo hardships one working season after another. The small, scarred hands tell the story of their uncared-for lives. But authorities and civil society does not spare a thought that houses and offices they inhabit or work from are made at an enormous cost of sacrificing the childhood and future of the rural youth in the country.
Under the National Foundation for India and India America foundation media fellowship programme.
The writer is a photo-journalist.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Magazine
|
